After months of negotiations, Tom Wheeler—the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)—thinks it’s about time for consumers to be able to unlock their phones without fear of breaking the law. He made that much clear in a letter sent Thursday [pdf] to the president and CEO of CTIA, the industry group that maintains a Consumer Code that most carriers follow. In that letter, Wheeler proposes a December deadline for CTIA to update that code to include meaningful unlocking provisions—or face FCC regulations.

According to Netanel, one often-overlooked aspect of the opinion is that the Court explicitly identified fair use as an essential “First Amendment accommodation” that cannot be disturbed if copyright law is to survive First Amendment scrutiny. In the process, the Court may have poked a hole in the already shaky constitutional justifications for anti-user sections of copyright law.

A Microsoft executive has confirmed that, contrary to earlier reports from the company, the upcoming Xbox One console will not require the Kinect sensor to be activated at all times after all. This change comes after a widespread backlash from gamers concerned about the privacy implications of an always-on camera pointed from the television back at the couch.

Today, EFF announced that it was making a formal objection to including consideration of digital rights management (DRM) in the First Public Working Draft from the HTML working group of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). This is part of EFF's long-running involvement in standards processes, fighting the entertainment companies and DRM vendors that want permanent control over disruptive technologies.